The Shifting Tide - Anne Perry [57]
Monk felt his face burn. He was standing in front of Louvain’s desk and Louvain was sitting in the large, carved, and padded chair behind it. Louvain had already remarked on Monk’s torn sleeve, and Monk had dismissed it.
“I need to convince them that I have stolen goods to sell,” Monk repeated, staring back at him unblinkingly. He knew exactly what Louvain was trying to do by his demeanor because he had exercised exactly that kind of domination of will over others when he had been in the police and had the power to back it. He refused to be cowed. “Talk means nothing,” he answered. “I have to show them something.”
“And you imagine I’m fool enough to give it to you?” There was a bitter derision in Louvain’s voice, and perhaps disappointment as well. “I fund four or five gold watches for you, hand them over, and why should I ever see you again, let alone my watches? What kind of an idiot do you take me for?”
“One that does not hire a man to retrieve his stolen goods without first finding out enough about him to know whether he can trust him or not,” Monk replied immediately.
Louvain smiled, showing his teeth. There was a flash of respect in his eyes, but no warmth. “I know a great deal more about you than you do about me,” he conceded with a touch of arrogance.
Monk smiled back, his look hard, as if he also had secret knowledge that amused him.
Louvain saw something, and there was a subtle change in his eyes.
Monk smiled more widely.
Suddenly, Louvain was uncertain. “What do you know about me?” he asked, no timbre or lift in his voice to indicate whether the answer mattered to him or not.
“I’m not concerned with anything except what has to do with the ivory,” Monk told him. “I needed to know your enemies, rivals, people who owe you, or whom you owe, and any persons who think you have wronged them.”
“And what have you found out?” Louvain’s eyebrows rose, interest sharper in him.
Perhaps if Louvain were to succeed in the hard and dangerous trade he had chosen he needed to appear a man no one would dare cross, but was there a gentle man behind the mask? Was he capable of softer passions as well, of love, vulnerability, dreams? Was the woman he had taken to Portpool Lane the mistress of a friend for whom he would perform such a service? Or was she perhaps his own mistress, and he had had to protect his family, whoever they were, wife, children, parents?
“What have you found?” Louvain repeated.
“Don’t you know?” Monk asked aloud.
Louvain nodded very slowly. “If I get the watches for you, you now know that if you steal them, England won’t be big enough for you to hide in, let alone London.”
“I won’t steal them because I’m not a thief,” Monk snapped. He was overpoweringly aware of the difference in wealth between them. He lived from week to week, and Louvain would know that, whereas Louvain owned ships, warehouses, a London home with carriages, horses, possibly even a house in the country. He would have servants, possessions, a future of as much certainty as was possible in life.
Louvain raised his eyebrows, but there was a flicker of humor in his face. “Perhaps no one else was rash enough to give you gold watches?”
“I never worked for anyone who lost a shipment of ivory before,” Monk snapped back. “I tend to specialize in murders.”
“And minor thefts,” Louvain added cruelly. “Lately you’ve retrieved a couple of brooches, a cello, a rare book, and three vases. However, you have failed to retrieve a silver salver, a red lacquer box, and a carriage horse.”
Monk’s temper seethed. Only knowledge of his own dependency on the payment for this job kept him in the room. “Which begs the question of why you asked me to find your ivory, rather than the River Police, as any other victim of crime would have done!” he said bitterly.
There were many emotions in Louvain’s face, violent and conflicting: fury, fear, a moment of respect, and mounting frustration. He realized Monk was still staring at him and that his eyes read far too much. “I’ll give you forty pounds,” he said abruptly. “Get